


stadium sound

by Anemoi



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Borussia Dortmund, Gen, Liverpool F.C.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 23:49:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5805106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The man looks back to find a road that ends at his feet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stadium sound

**Author's Note:**

> ive been trying to write this fic for so long. since october, probably. and now i have and it's not quite the fic i wanted to write but, well, when is it ever. sorry abt not spelling names properly w accents, im ;-;

 

1.

Zeljko raises an eyebrow as they surveyed the quiet before them.

“Is this what you expected?” 

Jurgen shakes his head, slowly, looking up at the stands pristine and silent before the early arrivers start to trickle in. The stars hanging frozen in the sky. He smiles wide, flashing it at Zeljko who catches it with practiced ease, who smiles back, same old. He reaches out to pat Zeljko on the elbow, once, hard, but lets his hand linger. 

Zeljko looks at him. 

“It’s better,” Jurgen says.  

 

2.

That’s how it begins, _Chapter Three_. Although of course it wasn't, because it starts with phone calls in the middle of the night, a long walk in the early morning, and putting pen to paper. Before that, it starts with losing the Pokal to Wolfsburg, and a long unstoppable slide. It starts with winning the Pokal against Bayern, Dortmund’s first double, twenty eight matches unbeaten. It starts with Mainz’s relegation. It starts with promotion and qualifying for the Europa league. It starts with a blonde man in a Mainz jersey laughing, brash and loud and unafraid. Starts with a boy, and a ball, because all these stories do, in the very beginning. This is the basic formula, and the simplest action; the story, distilled. 

 

 

3.

Spurs ends nil nil, which is a good enough beginning. Jurgen starts to learn about Liverpool, although learn may be the wrong word. It’s more like checking off a list that he’d compiled beforehand, finding new quirks after a fast marriage. Liverpool was well known, of course. Liverpool was a word that carried a disproportional weight even beyond the premier league, and Jurgen had known and been impressed. They have a good song. Of course, there were other, less reconcilable point of views: Liverpool is rock. Liverpool is solemnity and grandeur, Liverpool is hushed voices in the quiet of a cathedral, the wavering candlelight on well worn silver. There is no place in Liverpool for loud laughter, for winks and jokes, for _fun_. 

 

Jurgen thinks that’s a load of bullshit. 

 

 

4.

They take Stamford Bridge and leave Mourinho for dead, John Terry ashen faced. Jurgen’s laughing boys, Jurgen’s Church of the Halftime Comeback, and you could catch a glimpse of Liverpool reborn in the sunlight on the pitch. The future is this, the future is _red._  

 

 

5.

Jurgen Norbert Klopp. Back to the boy with a ball, and the story in simplicity. Back to the boy who has a heart big enough for the Bundesliga, frustrated by his own skill, or rather, lack thereof. Jurgen looks at the men on the pitch at Anfield and wonders, if after all, it’s going to be the same story, again. Crystal Palace is an old demon around here, hard to vanquish. The boy looks at the men on the pitch and wonders, if after all, it’s always going to be this: knowing what to do, knowing exactly what must be done, and not being able to do it. Jurgen’s hands clench into fists, and Zeljko’s grip on his elbow is a vice. The scoreline betrays their impotent desires: two-one. Two-one in Anfield. The banners on the Kop with his face already on them droop a little. 

 

 

6.

Liverpool is about expectations. Jurgen understands expectations. He says the right things in the interviews, grins his madcap grins, tucks the new cap on a little snugger. They had a cap ready for him when he first arrived; he felt, absurdly, touched. He lets the camera flashlights glint nonchalantly off the corners of his glasses. Jurgen knows how to play the game, both the one on the pitch and the one off of it. He stands on the touchline and waits for the world to believe. 

 

 

 

7.

They take the Etihad and leave Pellegrini for dead, the blue team in tatters. _Clap your hands if you believe_. The hope is this, the hope is _red_. 

 

 

 

8.

They whisper “the League” and they whisper “winning”, nonsense words that don’t factor into logical decision making. Only fuel for a desperate voice, for a desperate away fan when Liverpool’s losing in St James Park, some half remembered shred of hope. Look, the story is still a boy and a ball. The story is how the boy thought with his heart and not with his head (though he could do both, and when they align, then- but this is not that story), the story is how the boy found out that fortune did not favor the bold. Fortune liked to fuck them over, because fortune, like a football match, is permanently fickle.  

 

 

9.

Liverpool is about loyalty. Jurgen understands loyalty. Loyalty didn’t make sense so much to the manager as to the man who only ever played in the Mainz jersey, so long ago. To the manager it is different. Jurgen makes the players form a line, makes them hold their hands and their heads up for the fans clapping, for equalizing against West Brom. Does he know what it’s like to hitch his heart to a football team? He doesn’t cry, and so the stadium doesn’t blur into another one, the colors don’t shift, and there are no easy answers, no trick in refracted tears to blame. 

 

 

10.

He only brings it up once, to Zeljko, because of course. Zeljko is as much Jurgen (and as separate) as one can get. 

“What if I can’t,” he says, very quietly. Zeljko doesn’t say anything. What if he can’t? What if he can’t find the answers, what if he goes to Liverpool and they find him out, they find him a fraud in the end, they find that belief doesn’t become reality no matter how much you wanted it to. 

Because they will, in the end. Reverse the story. 

“You can,” Zeljko says, simply. It isn’t belief so much as something _crazier_. Jurgen shakes his head and starts to smile, wants to shake Zeljko instead. 

“Okay,” he says, and believed it.

 

 

11.

Klopp’s kids, they called them. Liverpool hamstrung. Liverpool unrecognizable. Liverpool player _who_? They try twice but they bring Exeter to their knees. Jurgen is proud; not bad for a bunch of kids. 

 

 

 

12.

Arsenal come to Anfield and it is raining. Jurgen stands on the touchline and waits for his team to believe. They only need a little bit (they only have a tiny bit), they’re scraping the bottom of the jar now. It’s enough. Sometimes it’s enough, and he puts a hand over his jacket where the liverbird is. Do you know what it’s like to hitch your heart to a football team? 

 

An eight yard volley to equalize. One point. It’s raining, but oh, their heads are held high and their hearts are fearless. 

 

 

 

13.

Liverpool is about winning. Jurgen understands winning. This is the fact buried under the sacrosanct rituals and the martyred pining, the groans of pessimism, the fears and disbelief. Liverpool is about winning, the fact half forgotten under the reality of loss. _What is your deepest fear?_ Not relegation, surely, because there would be something to fight for. Rock bottom is as solid a foundation as any. _What is your deepest fear?_ Sixth. Eighth. Ninth. Sixth again. Until the past becomes all, like cataracts on eyes, and the future slips quietly out of their grasp.

 

 

14.

Manchester United come to Anfield and win. The story is this ( _are you getting tired of it? it is always the same_ ), the story is simple; the boy and the ball. The boy does everything right, and it does not matter. 

 

 

15.

Liverpool is still a child with too long limbs and thin wrists. Struggling to hold his head up, to keep his aching neck straight under the heavy crown of history. It's too big to sit well, slipping over his forehead, but he will bite his lips bloody before crying from pain. 

 

 

 

16.

The story is better told in reverse, because (read it yourself, backwards) look, here is the happiness. Here is the blonde man grinning his cheshire grin, stepping in and ruffling Reus’ carefully gelled hair. Here is the blonde man who is manager of recently promoted team Mainz 05, and here he is scoring his first goal for them, look at them all smiling, look at the hugs and the flowers. Look at the confetti, the man bowing with his hand on his heart, distance in between separated by the black and yellow crest. 

 

 

 

17.

There once was a boy who wanted too much. There once was a boy who could never settle for anything less than the impossible. There once was a man who proved impossible is achievable, if you could only believe in it enough. Jurgen is on the touchline, not knowing the answers, again. The game is equalized, this time not in Liverpool’s favor, the comeback kings done in by their own best trick. Jurgen is on the touchline, furious. Zeljko’s mouth pressed to a thin, rueful line, and he keeps his hands to himself this time, because Jurgen is _furious_.   

 

 

18.

What did they say about the impossible?

 

 

 

19.

It’s a league game against Norwich. It’s a league game against Norwich with all the sorrow rolling back, the sun dazzling. Of course soon the sorrows will return like an ache from an old wound that never quite heals; the games where everything makes sense and yet the flame refuses to light. Soon the clouds will blow back in, and Liverpool will run, footsteps haunted by the past, fingertips stretched desperate toward the future. Soon, but for now there’s a wide open sunlit sky for miles and miles. Jurgen spins around just to take it all in again, dizzying. 

The understanding is brief and eternal like a last minute winner in a league game on a saturday evening, a season like many season before it, days and months stacked together in meaningless numbers, and he lets it settle, not reaching or trying to take it apart, to keep it for longer as some sort of proof. The red shirts slung into the crowd. _Li-ver-pool, Li-ver-pool_. The men- his men- the Liverpool men slinging arms around shoulders. The refrain the same, in Anfield or not. 

It's just that simple, all of a sudden. Thin as a wire threaded into his heart.

  


20.

This is what it means, come what may.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _The game is enough of a story - Jurgen Klopp_  

**Author's Note:**

> anything repetitive is probably Red or Dead. Blame 44 Years With the Same Bird, for feelings re: history. Blame Brian Philipps for ~Liverpool is an opulent gothic club with organ music playing in the background~. "Not bad for a bunch of kids" is probably used in context for Fergie's kids by assorted media, i just nabbed it out of irony because im bitter abt Utd. 
> 
>  
> 
> thanks for reading <3 ynwa.


End file.
